“With a savage appearance, and manners, and customs, which are entirely barbarous, there is observable among them a social kindness, free from almost all the imperfections which so often disturb the peace of society among us. They appear to be without passion; but they do that in cold blood, and sometimes through principle, which the most violent and unbridled passion produces in those who give no ear to reason. They seem to lead the most wretched life in the world; and they were, perhaps, the only happy people on earth, before the knowledge of the objects which so much work upon and seduce us, had excited in them desires which ignorance kept in supineness, and which have not, as yet, made any great ravages among them. We discover in them a mixture of the fiercest and the most gentle manners; the imperfections of wild beasts, united with virtues and qualities of the mind and heart which do the greatest honor to human nature. One would think at first they had no form of government; that they acknowledge neither laws nor subordination; and that living in an entire independence, they suffer themselves to be solely guided by chance, and the wildest caprice. Nevertheless, they enjoy almost all the advantages that a well regulated authority can secure to the best governed nations. Born free and independent, they look with horror on the very shadow of despotic power; but they seldom depart from certain principles and customs founded on good sense, which are to them instead of laws, and which in some measure supply the place of a lawful authority. They will not bear the least restraint; but reason alone keeps them in a kind of subordination, which, from being voluntary, it not less effectual to obtain the end intended.”[1] The Illinois has the same peculiarity I observed in all the rivers of the Mississippi valley. With the exception of here and there a solitary plantation, or a little embryo town, few traces of man appear on its borders until you arrive at the great prairie, above the head of steam navigation, which extends all the way to the lakes. At long distances we came upon one of those evidences of the busy body, man, in the shape of a little village, a clearing, or an establishment for putting up pork for exportation, where I was told, notwithstanding the “hard times,” they throw the ears, feet, and often heads of the swine into the river, to feed the eels and catfish. Indeed, from what I observed throughout the whole extent of my journey, in this suffering region, there is almost as much wasted there as would serve to feed the starving manufacturers of England.